The microelectronic industry is continually striving to produce ever faster and smaller microelectronic packages for use in various electronic products, including, but not limited to portable products, such as portable computers, digital cameras, electronic tablets, cellular phones, and the like. Some of these electronic products, such as electronic tablets and cellular phones, have a relatively short life expectancy, i.e. about three years, and, thus, the reliability requirements for the microelectronic packages used in these electronic products has reduced. However, electronic products using high performance microelectronic packages with an estimated end life of about 5-7 years still require good reliability performance.
Reliability related failures within these high performance microelectronic packages are primarily due to interlayer dielectric delamination and fillet cracks. Such failures have been exacerbated by the use of low-k and ultra low-k interlayer dielectric materials in the fabrication of these microelectronic packages to reduce their size. Therefore, there is a need to develop package designs which reduce such reliability failures.